


Help Is Other People

by Northern_spies



Series: TMA Afterlife Reunions [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, Fluff, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26487721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northern_spies/pseuds/Northern_spies
Summary: When Tim dies and doesn't recognize her at first, Sasha shares the memories that help him remember.Part one of a series on how the S1 archives crew reunite in the afterlife, meeting by meeting.
Relationships: Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Series: TMA Afterlife Reunions [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925638
Comments: 16
Kudos: 41





	Help Is Other People

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I want nice things for the S1 archives crew and The Good Place is my favorite fictional afterlife, so here's a fic series where they get the chance to reunite and have the time they didn't get on Earth. 
> 
> Contains spoilers-by-allusion to final season of The Good Place. Title of this entry is from TGP season 4, episode 7. 
> 
> All my love and thanks to The Magnus Writers Discord for developing this idea with me. Unbetaed despite how lovely they are because I'm a coward and just getting back into the swing of writing.

Sasha wakes up dead and everything is fine. There isn’t any pain, nothing stretching her essence into a grotesque overcoat for her replacement to wear. There’s only a quiet room, a low sofa, and a small blonde woman with an American accent, telling her she has made it into the good place. It’s a surprise, after everything she’s seen and what she had, however briefly, _been_ , to discover that such a place exists.

Her first thought is to talk about it with Tim. They’d always managed to settle one another about the weirder things in life, and death can’t be that different, not if she’s still breathing and walking and thinking. Not to mention she could really use a hug right now. 

Except this isn’t the office on a Wednesday morning, it’s the afterlife and Tim isn’t about to show up ten minutes late with an iced coffee and a cheeky excuse. She doesn't actually want him to die, right?

She’s told that most people make it to the good place, eventually. She’ll just have to wait. 

* * *

The waiting isn’t always unpleasant, necessarily. Sasha meets up with a pair of classmates who had been killed in a car crash the month before graduation and it’s good to hear their voices. She’s got a house furnished just how she likes it and her childhood dog is there, ready for a cuddle. Best of all, she finds Uncle Leroy. He’s everything her mum had said, tall and soft spoken, blinking over the rim of his glasses just like he did in the home videos Mum brought out every May 17th. He sweeps her into a hug the moment they meet, whispers “you look just like Iris.” Holds her like her mother did. 

No one holds her like Tim did.

While they’re a comfort, her rediscovered family and friends, she hadn’t left anything unsaid with any of them, not really. It isn’t like with Martin and Jon, and certainly not anything like how she’d left things with Tim. She dreams of Martin’s hands, somehow steady on her leg as he pulled a worm from her body, all his usual anxiety evaporated when she needed him most. She thinks of Jon’s face when she charged out the door after Tim, fear more evident than it had ever been. He'd cared after all. She feels the ghost of Tim’s body, solid against hers, as she tried to tackle him into safety. A tackle, not a hug, no time for a hug and yet, all she wanted now that she was coming to forget the details of what he’d felt like in her arms, the tone of his laugh. Had her last words to him really been “behind you, run?”

* * *

When Sasha’s summoned to greet a new arrival and isn’t told who it is, she tries not to get her hopes (up or down, she can't say) that it might be him. But she’s second in line to meet whoever it is and that sets her facsimile of a pulse racing. She isn’t inclined to overstate her own value to someone; knows most of her friendships lost depth when she took the job at the Institute and she's unlikely to be on the welcome crew for many of them. Still, there's only one person she can imagine Tim wanting to see more than her. She paces the station, rehearses what to say if it’s him. 

When the door opens and Tim waltzes into the room, arm slung around a nearly identical man, she rushes forward without thinking. “Tim!”

“Sasha?” Tim says, and while she knows _why_ it's a question, it hurts. She stops short of reaching him, watches as he stumbles backward.

She schools her smile into an uncomplicated answer. “Yeah, Tim. It’s me.”

“Are you- are you sure?” His voice is gentle, but his eyes are guarded and even in death her heart can hardly tolerate that he doesn’t know her any more. 

Sasha wants to reach out, take him into her arms again, call him any one of the dozen nicknames she'd had for him before they died. Instead, she swallows to keep her voice steady. "I'm sure. We were coworkers first and then best friends?" Tim's brow draws together and she has to summon all her courage to continue. "I called you ‘Timbo’ when you were being sweet, and ‘sweetheart’ when you were being annoying.” 

He catches her eyes and slowly blinks at her. “What else?”

She reaches for something light. “We had bets going about everything, from when Martin would slip up and tell Jon about his crush to when we’d finally get sacked.” She scrubs a hand across her face and looks away. “I wish we _had_ gotten sacked.” So much for light. 

His answering chuckle is the best thing she’s heard since she died. “Unfortunately that’s not how the Institute works. I tried though.” 

“You did?” At least he’d tried to get away. At least he's giving more than two word answers now. 

“Yeah, I ran off. Long story, but first- can you tell me more? About- about us?”

“As much as you want to hear.” They exchange a brief smile, a shy thing, but it makes her stomach flutter all the same. “You, ah. You used to doodle really terrible comics of us as superheroes. ‘Strip-Poker-Stoker,’ with the power to win any card game-”

“And any heart,” he finishes with a short laugh. 

“And any heart,” she repeats, a little breathless. “Never without his sidekick, ‘No-Games-James.”

Tim shakes his head. “Sasha James was never just a sidekick. Not to me.”

His voice is so soft, and the rest comes so easily to her after that. “You were the highlight of my days and my last text good night. You were the best thing about that rotten place and I’ve regretted not telling you that every day since I died. I love you, and I’ve missed you, and you can take all the time you need to believe me because I'll be right here waiting for you."

Tim reaches for her then, lets his hand drop just short of hers. "It's you," he says, voice brimming with wonder. "That’s your voice, your proper voice. When I found out that thing vwasn’t you, I listened to an old tape where you, the real you, spoke. Over and over." He swallows raggedly before continuing. "I didn’t recognize it, but I memorized it. I thought, if my life flashes before my eyes when I die, I want to know which parts of it featured the real Sasha James. And now I’m dead and you're _you,_ Sasha. You've got long hair and the most gorgeous eyes and I now I remember _youp_." 

His eyes are glassed over with tears and Sasha can’t stand apart from him for another moment. She reaches out and takes his hands in hers. "I'm so sorry.” 

Tim inhales sharply. " _You're_ sorry? I ran off and you were killed."

"It wasn't like that, I got out. The problem was when I went back-"

"If I'd followed you-"

"Martin and Jon were in there too, I'd still have gone back-"

"I could have gone with you, might have stopped it, or it could have been me instead-"

"Stop, Tim. It's over, it's done." She presses a hand to his chest, feels his heart beat under her palm. "I'm grateful you didn't die and leave me alone like I left you. I- I thought it was awful waiting here for you but I see it now. It would have been so much worse, having to go on living without even a real memory of you. Let me be sorry." 

Tim rushes fully into her arms then, nearly suffocates her in a tight embrace. She guides his head to her shoulder and holds him just as tight. "I didn't mean to forget you."

“No more than I meant to leave you,” she says, running her hands across his back, mapping the reality that he’s finally here, where she needed him to be. 

She feels his lips at her temple, a murmured “ _My_ Sasha." 

He's warm against her, solid and sure. She might stay here forever. “Your Sasha,” she whispers back. 

After a moment, Tim pulls away, just enough to call over his shoulder. "Danny! Come meet my Sasha." In an instant she's wedged between them, shaking with laughter as they compete to see who can hold on longer. Getting sandwiched between two Stokers is a hug well worth waiting for and Sasha can't help being grateful she'll never have to wait again.

**Author's Note:**

> TMA is beautiful and wonderful and tragic. I love it for exactly what it is, certain-to-be-heartbreaking ending and all. 
> 
> I also love the fundamentally not tragic The Good Place, where the central messages are that our connections to other people can indeed save us from the worst the world has to offer and we will all get a shot at enough time with the people we love. That’s the happy fanfic ending I want to give these characters so, if you’ve enjoyed this, be on the lookout for future entries in the series as Martin and Jon die and join Sasha and Tim in the good place.
> 
> I'm in love with this premise but too soft to give it the angst it really deserves, with Tim taking longer to remember Sasha. If anyone does it please let me know so I can read it and shower you with adoration! 
> 
> If you’d ever like to talk TMA/TGP parallels, find me on tumblr at https://northern-spies.tumblr.com/.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
